Candida F. Sánchez Burmester

Candida Sánchez Burmester is a PhD candidate in Science and Technology Studies at Maastricht University. She combines historical and ethnographic methods to analyze how contested claims have emerged, circulated, and have been challenged at conferences and laboratories in nanobiology. Based on historical sources, she examines connections between nanotoxicology and both classical toxicology in the late 20th century and nanosciences more generally. She also follows the traces of a nanoparticle that emerged in the 1990s and examines the controversy surrounding this particle on its way to becoming a commercial product and clinical treatment. Additionally, she conducts ethnographic observations at nanobio-laboratories and conferences to gain insights into how claims are being discussed and scrutinized at these sites, working closely with a team of scientists who are trying to replicate experiments of influential articles in their field. Her PhD is part of the European Research Council-funded Synergy project NanoBubbles: how, when and why does science fail to correct itself? a highly interdisciplinary consortium that investigates how and why over-statements and errors in nanobiology occur and are (not) corrected.

Together with colleagues from the nanobio-community, Candida has co-organized a conference on replications and unresolved questions about nanoparticles inside mammalian cells, and she has recently joined the board of the Commission on the History of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences. Her research interests include scientific practices at different research spaces, the history of toxicology, and the history of potent compounds in non-human animals and plants and their journey through different knowledge systems.